Explaining, Interpreting, and Prescribing: Some Tensions and Dilemmas in the Comparative Analysis of Youth Justice Cultures
| Published date | 01 October 2019 |
| Date | 01 October 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12183 |
| Author | Stewart Field |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 46, ISSUE S1, OCTOBER 2019
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. S51±S72
Explaining, Interpreting, and Prescribing: Some Tensions
and Dilemmas in the Comparative Analysis of Youth Justice
Cultures
Stewart Field*
This chapter reflects on the implications of a cross-cultural empirical
research study on youth justice in Italy and Wales for transnational
prescription of good practice. It examines the challenges in doing
comparative studies which isolate the influence of particular elements
of criminal justice regimes. Such analysis may seem well suited to
transnational policy prescription in that particular elements are more
easily transposed than whole systems. But institutional categories and
practice may be so culturally imbedded that it becomes very difficult to
understand their influence outside those particular cultural contexts.
The article goes on to examine the potential (and the limitations) for
transnational policy prescription of more holistic interpretive
approaches to explanation rooted in analysis of legal cultures. It
concludes that such approaches can expand the range of possible
policy choices in terms of transnational prescription but cannot offer a
means to predict their precise effects.
INTRODUCTION
Comparative research often identifies and highlights cross-cultural diversity
in social and legal practices and norms. It is that very diversity that often
seems to open up the possibility of doing things differently. But if the way
we think and act in matters of security and justice is defined by varying local
cultures, then this may raise questions about the feasibility of effective
transfer out of a specific cultural context and even, perhaps, its desirability.
This article reflects on the experience of conducting an empirical research
study which, relying on interviews and matched case-file samples, sought to
S51
*Cardiff School of Law and Politics, Law Building, Museum Avenue,
Cardiff CF10 3AX, Wales
fieldsa@cardiff.ac.uk
ß2019 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2019 Cardiff University Law School
compare youth justice practice in Wales (specifically south Wales) and Italy
(with a focus on Emilia Romagna).
1
It argues that our capacity to evaluate
and prescribe policy and practice cross-culturally on the basis of comparative
studies is influenced by the research strategies and methods adopted. In
particular, it examines the challenges, difficulties, and implications of two
different ways of approaching such research: first, a conventional social
science research strategy seeking to explain difference by isolating key
variables for comparison and secondly, a more holistic interpretive approach
organized around the concept of legal cultures.
The argument proceeds in four steps. First, some preliminary remarks
about the relationship between purposes, methods, and concepts in cross-
cultural research which draw on arguments first made by my co-researcher
Professor David Nelken. Secondly, an outline of how we constructed the
study. This emphasizes the difficulties of finding valid cross-cultural
anchoring points on which to pin an analysis of particular elements and
variables within each system as might be required by more traditional
positivist social science approaches. Thirdly, an explanation of the inter-
pretive cultural approach that we adopted with its insights and the limits to
those insights. Lastly, an exploration of the implications for cross-cultural
evaluation and policy prescription.
PURPOSES, METHODS, AND CONCEPTS IN COMPARATIVE
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
David Nelken has argued the need for more explicit examination of the
significance of the different underlying objectives of comparative research.
2
In particular, he has called for examination of how different purposes impact
on the way that comparative research is conducted, how data is interpreted
and presented and (policy) conclusions are drawn or not drawn. He identifies
five such purposes: describing, classifying, explaining, interpreting, and
evaluating.
3
In this article, I want to focus on the interrelationship between
explaining and interpreting and their implications for evaluation. Nelken
distinguishes explanations constructed in terms of causal relations between
discrete objective factors and those constructed as holistic interpretive
accounts.
4
The former (associated with a certain traditional social science
often termed positivist) seeks to formulate and test explanatory hypotheses
about causal relationships that will hold good across cultures and social
S52
1 The study was led by myself and Professor David Nelken and funded by the
Economic and Social Research Council in the United Kingdom (Reference number
R000239418) and by the Ministry for the Universities in Italy.
2 D. Nelken, Comparative Criminal Justice: Making Sense of Difference (2010).
3 id., throughout, but especially ch. 1.
4 id., ch. 3.
ß2019 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2019 Cardiff University Law School
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